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The item Ming : 50 years that changed China, edited by Craig Clunas and Jessica Harrison-Hall represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Topsfield Town Library.

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This was an age of great voyages of exploration, undertaken for many reasons including trade and diplomacy. Long before the regular arrivals of Europeans in China, court-sponsored expeditions were sent to Asia, the Middle East, and the African coast, bringing back knowledge of and objects from lands thousands of miles away - gold, gems and foreign fashions. This period also saw the compilation of the world's first comprehensive encyclopaedia (worked on by over 2,000 scholars); the undertaking of major building projects such as the Forbidden City and Ming tombs; the creation of beautiful textiles, paintings, ceramics, gold, jewellery, furniture, jade, and lacquer

This was an age of great voyages of exploration, undertaken for many reasons including trade and diplomacy. Long before the regular arrivals of Europeans in China, court-sponsored expeditions were sent to Asia, the Middle East, and the African coast, bringing back knowledge of and objects from lands thousands of miles away - gold, gems and foreign fashions. This period also saw the compilation of the world's first comprehensive encyclopaedia (worked on by over 2,000 scholars); the undertaking of major building projects such as the Forbidden City and Ming tombs; the creation of beautiful textiles, paintings, ceramics, gold, jewellery, furniture, jade, and lacquer